Erbs

“ It will be recognised from these examples that the doctrine of signatures was remarkably elastic, and was not fettered by any rigid consistency.
Text-fig. 109. Herbs of the Scorpion [Porta, Phytognomonica, 1591] .
The illustrations of the ‘Phytognomonica’ are of great interest as interpreting Porta’s point of view. The part of man’s body which is healed by a particular herb, or the209 animal whose bites or stings can be cured by it, are represented in the same wood-cut as the herb. ”

“ He supposed, for example, that long-lived plants would lengthen a man’s life, while short-lived plants would abbreviate it. He held that herbs with a yellow sap would cure jaundice, while those whose surface was rough to the touch would heal those diseases that destroy the natural smoothness of the skin. The resemblance of certain plants to certain animals opened to Porta a vast field of dogmatism on a basis of conjecture. ”

“ Erb followed, and the other men contributed to the irregular circle of names. The elderly carman hesitated, but one of his colleagues remarked that one might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and the elderly carman appeared to derive great encouragement from this, signing his name carefully and legibly, and looking at it when done with something like affection.
“I sha'n't ask you to get away with your loads many more times,” shouted the van foreman from the other end of the arch. “Yes, it's you I'm talkin' to. You're all champion mikers, every one of you. ”

“ Erb discovering the lines with the aid of Rosalind's finger, gave the cue. “For he to-day——” The old Professor went on. “'For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my be-rother! be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition, And gentlemen in England, And gentlemen in England—and gentlemen in England.' No use,” said the Professor weakly, “my study's gone.”
“Don't bother about it, sir.”
“Laddie,” said the Professor, “you—you think me a thriftless, miserable wastrel.”
“No, no,” answered Erb. “We're none of us perfect.” ”

“ A faithful coadjutor was 'Erb, who, with his mouth-organ and Jew's-harp, probably saved the reason, or the life, of more than one man. 'Erb seemed to feel the heat less than bigger men, and he would sit cross-legged upon his mattress, evoking tuneful strains from his beloved instruments when far stronger men could only lie panting like distressed dogs. ”

“ The girl looked at him, at her father, then again at Erb. She had a pencil resting between the buttons of her pink blouse, and but for a slight contraction of the forehead that is the public sign of private worry, would have been a very happy-looking young person indeed.
“A would-be student,” said her father with a proud wave of the hand towards Erb, as though he had just made him, “a would-be student, my love: one anxious to gain at our hands the principles of voice pro-duction and ee-locution.” ”

“ A young horse was brought up from the stables to take the place of the solemn animal, and its eccentric and sportive behaviour served to occupy Erb’s thoughts during the afternoon. He had occasion to deliver a hamper of vegetables at a house in Eaton Square, and to collect a basket of laundry, and as he waited he saw his sister Alice on the steps of her house whistling for a hansom ”

“ It is not all trees, too, that have this fat and flesh in any abundance, the same as we find to be the case among the more active animals. The box, the cornel, and the olive have none at all, nor yet any marrow, and a very small proportion, too, of blood. In the same way, too, the service-tree has no bones, and the elder no flesh, while both of them have marrow in the greatest abundance. Reeds, too, have hardly any flesh. ”

“ With cheerful sociability, 'Erb had already seated himself at table, and was beating a loud tattoo with mug and plate as he awaited the administrations of the soup-laden Ganymede.
Suddenly the expansive and genial smile faded on 'Erb's happy face, as he felt himself seized by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his trousers, and raised four feet in the air.... For a second he hovered, descended a foot and was then shot through the air with appalling violence to some distant corner of the earth. Fortunately for 'Erb, that corner contained a bed and he landed fairly on it.... ”

“ It gave Erb a sensation of power to find that not one of these uniformed men in their brass-bound caps was strong-minded enough or sufficiently clear of intellect to carry out any big scheme by himself; they could only keep of one mind by shoring each other up, and he felt that he himself was the one steady, upright person who prevented them all from slipping. ”

“ One or two men standing at the zinc bar called on Erb to have a drink, but Erb replied, “Afterwards!” and went up the wooden staircase to the club-room. There, on the landing, men were consulting in undertones, which they changed for much louder speech on seeing Erb, commencing to talk noisily of contests with superiors whom they had, it appeared, worsted in argument; of fresh young horses that required a somewhat similar treatment ”

“ If the journal itself was not below contempt——”
“Look here!” interrupted Erb sharply, “don't you go rubbing it in too thick.”
“Sir William is a man with a large heart,” said the other partner, taking up a more conciliatory tone, “and we shall advise him in the circumstances to do the generous thing. You will print in the next issue of your paper an apology?”
“A most humble apology,” remarked the other partner, “terms of which you will permit us to dictate to you. ”

“ It seems to me that the term “belly of the leg” [15] came to us Greeks from there, since the leg performs the function of a belly with them. But I will tell you something else, still more wonderful. They have a kind of men whom they call the Arboreals, who are brought into the world as follows: Exsecting a man’s right genital gland, they plant it in the ground. From it grows a very large tree of flesh, resembling the emblem of Priapus: it has branches and leaves, and its fruit is acorns a cubit thick. When these ripen, they harvest them and shell out the men. ”

“ Erb pulled a drawer underneath the table and complied.
“The other way about, stupid,” said the short girl wrathfully. “You don’t take your knife in your left hand, do you? ’Pon me word, I often wonder that men was ever invented. ”

“ The boy doctor looked anxiously from the foot of the sofa: Rosalind knelt.
“You're going to have a nice long sleep, sir,” said Erb, bending down. “And you'll wake up a different man, bless you.”
“I shall wake up,” repeated the Professor slowly, “wake up a different man.”
Both eyelids closing now, he turned his white head a little towards the wall. Presently his grip of Erb's hand relaxed, and Erb, disengaging himself, went with the others to the window, where the three spoke in an undertone, Erb holding Rosalind's elbows supportingly. A slight groan from the sofa. ”

“ For the body, which consists of bones and flesh, takes its beginning from the seed of a man, which is extracted from the marrow by warmth, and conveyed into the womb as into a soil, to which it adheres, and is gradually moistened from the fountain of the blood, and so is changed into flesh and bones, and is formed into the likeness of him who injected the seed. ”

“ Being parlourmaid in Eaton Square, and about five foot ten from top to toe, don’t entitle anybody to come down ’ere to Page’s Walk and act about as though Bricklayers’ Arms Station belonged to them. After all, she’s only a servant, Erb; there’s no getting away from that. She doesn’t get her evenings to herself like I do. ”

“ Erb's Aunt Emma, giving herself reward for a month's hard work in the hop-garden, came up every year by the September excursion. It happened on this occasion that the day could not have made a more awkward attempt to fit in with Erb's convenience.
“Well,” said Aunt Emma, in the 'bus, desolately, “I'm not surprised! It's what comes of looking forward to anything. ”

“ It was natural when Erb had looked through these notices that he should find in his pocket two or three copies of a small poster advertising a lecture by him on the forthcoming Sunday evening, at a hall in Walworth Road. “Mr. Herbert Barnes,” said the poster loudly, adding in a lower voice, “Organising Secretary Railway Carmen’s Union, will speak on The Working Man: What Will Become of Him? No collection. Discussion invited.” Erb gave Miss Rosalind one of these as p. ”

“ For a moment it occurred to Erb that this might be a sample of aristocratic chaff; he stopped his retort on seeing that the other was talking with perfect seriousness. “But something else may happen at any moment. We live in strange times.”
“We always do,” said Erb.
“I shall keep you in my mind.”
Lady Frances eluded some dowagers who were bearing down upon her, and came to him; she took an envelope from a pretty hiding place.
“My uncle particularly begged me to give you this. You were so good, Mr. Barnes. (Don’t open it until you get home.) Your speech was just what one wanted. ”

“ When, however, the animal has attained its complete size, then, during the whole period following its birth and until the acme is reached, the faculty of growth is predominant, while the alterative and nutritive faculties are accessory—in fact, act as its handmaids. What, then, is the property of this faculty of growth? To extend in every direction that which has already come into existence—that is to say, the solid parts of the body, the arteries, veins, nerves, bones, cartilages, membranes, ligaments, and the various coats which we have just called elementary, homogeneous, and simple. ”

“ But Nature does not preserve the original character of any kind of matter; if she did so, then all parts of the animal would be blood—that blood, namely, which flows to the semen from the impregnated female and which is, so to speak, like the statuary’s wax, a single uniform matter, subjected to the artificer. From this blood there arises no part of the animal which is as red and moist [as blood is] , for bone, artery, vein, nerve, cartilage, fat, gland, membrane, and marrow are not blood, though they arise from it. ”

“ Only a part of the marrow, the so-called red marrow, is normally occupied by erythroblastic tissue, the rest of the medullary cavity of the bones being taken up by fat. If any long-continued demand for red corpuscles is made, the fat is absorbed, and its place gradually taken by red marrow. ”

“ The particular blend of trouble which Willow Walk was occupied in brewing proved highly attractive to Erb, and one that gave to all the men concerned a taste of the joys that must have come in the French Revolution. A few impetuous young spirits who had been brooding on grievances since the days when they were van boys were responsible. ”

“ For every structure, therefore, there is a period of emergence from something more general. The earliest discernible germ of any part or organ may be called its primordium. In this sense the ovum is the primordium of the individual, the primitive outer tissue the primordium of all structures of the skin and nervous system, the primitive inner layer of the intestine and all structures connected with it, etc. ”

“ The Erub of courts or combination of alleys may be effected with all kinds of nutriment except water and salt. Is it permitted to make an Erub with bread made of rice or millet? A man may give money to the wine-seller or baker in order to acquire the right to join in the Erub. ”

“ In one account they are created male and female, and apparently at the same time. In the next account, Adam is made first, and Eve a long time afterwards, and from a part of the man. Did God simply by his creative fiat cause a rib slowly to expand, grow and divide into nerve, ligament, cartilage and flesh? How was the woman created from a rib? How was man created simply from dust? ”

“ The first tree of the system of red blood, the trunk of the second and the heart that serves to unite them, are found then concentrated in the cavity of the thorax, whilst the branches of the second trunk are distributed among all the organs of the economy, and even to all its extremities. ”

“ Now Nature constructs bone, cartilage, nerve, membrane, ligament, vein, and so forth, at the first stage of the animal’s genesis, employing at this task a faculty which is, in general terms, generative and alterative, and, in more detail, warming, chilling, drying, or moistening ”

“ But, in order to do this, no one would go through the great trouble and labor of chopping through the bony parts of the ribs of a horse. Moreover, such a proceeding would be incompatible with the objection to mangling the horse's bones, which is strongly displayed elsewhere in the Vedic hymn.
"But every bony rib ends below in a gristly substance, and it is quite easy to cut these ‘costal cartilages,’ and then, turning them back, along with the breastbone, the cavity of the chest is laid widely open, and the priest readily reaches the heart or the like. ”

“ A plain man, remarked Lady Frances's uncle of himself (which, in one respect at any rate, was a statement bearing the indelible stamp of truth) , always of opinion that it was well to plunge in medias res. On Erb replying that at present he had no remark to offer, the purple-faced Director seemed taken aback, and diverted the conversation for a time to Trichinopolies and how best to keep them, a subject on which Erb was unable to speak with any pretence of authority.
“Little whiskey?” suggested the Director, with his thumb on the electric bell, “just to keep one alive.” ”